This study—revised from a dissertation completed in 2000—is a
valuable contribution to the history of early modern England and
the history of early modern Jewry. Its importance lies in precisely
this combination, that is to say the author's insistence that the
emergence of a Jewish community in England after a hiatus of almost
four centuries can only be properly understood by investigating as
fully as possible the complex English context in which the
readmission of Jews took place.

Glaser begins by addressing instructively the subsequent
treatments of the readmission and the needs imposed by their later
settings. She opens the first chapter with a striking citation from
Lucien Wolf, composed in 1906, which was purportedly the two
hundred fiftieth anniversary of the readmission.

They [Oliver Cromwell and Menasseh ben Israel] are the figures
of a Christian and a Jew, standing together in the dawn of English
liberty, twin champions of a wronged people, and heralds of a free
state. It is a picture on which we do well to dwell ... which in
its stability and fruitfulness serves as a beacon of toleration and
liberty to the dark places that still linger on the face of God's
earth.

(p. 7)

The tendentiousness of this observation is obvious, and Glaser
proceeds to present and analyze a series of evaluations of the
readmission, ranging from the seventeenth through the twentieth
century. In so doing, she introduces us to the diverse views of the
phenomenon and convinces us of the need for a presentation more
firmly rooted in the context of early modern England.

In chapters two and three, Glaser examines closely the Puritan
and Anglican churches and their concern with Judaism, Jewish texts,
and Jewish practices in the religious controversies that were
endemic to late- sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England and
argues convincingly that this concern was a reflection of the
ongoing strife between these contesting religious visions. Further,
Glaser contends that the discussion of Judaism in Puritan and
Anglican circles involved a close look at many key institutions and
ideas of the Jewish past, grounded in knowledge of Hebrew and
awareness of Jewish sources. Finally, Glaser urges that the
late-sixteenth- and seventeenth-century concern with Judaism,
Jewish thinking, and Jewish practice, which took place in the
absence of Jews and with no thought of a Jewish presence, forms the
important prehistory of the eventual grappling with the issue of
admitting Jews. As Glaser puts it at the beginning of chapter four:
"An analysis of Jewish ideas in these debates [the seventeenth
century debates on toleration of Jews] illustrates the continuity
between Elizabethan church-state debates and seventeenth-century
tolerationist debates, demonstrating both that seventeenth-century
toleration was less of a radical departure than its subsequent
representation sometimes suggests, and also that references to the
toleration of Jews followed in the same tradition as Christian
polemical discourse written in a much earlier period, when the very
idea of Jews in Christian England was almost entirely theoretical"
(p. 94). Once again, her claims are convincing.

In chapters four and five, Glaser turns to the debate on
tolerating Jews. While insisting that this debate included
important echoes of the earlier religious argumentation, she does
make room for the introduction of weighty political and legal
issues as well. In many ways, this debate ultimately involved the
nature and future of the English state and the English people. For
this new debate was no longer about abstractions; it was focused on
the issue of admitting actual Jews into the actual English kingdom.
As a result, this new debate was—if anything—yet more intense than
the earlier religious polemic. As was true for the earlier
religious polemic, so too this later debate was hardly simple and
clear-cut. Ambiguities abounded on both sides, and it is difficult
to create a cast of heroes and villains, as so much history writing
ends up doing.

Admission of Jews was hardly the dominant issue on the
seventeenth-century English agenda. Nonetheless, it is a useful
vehicle for examining the fault lines in English society, and
Glaser is successful in portraying the battle in this way, thereby
illuminating early modern English history usefully. Admission of
Jews...

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